Random stuff from a software developer

Monthly Archives: November 2017

With both the Senate and the House proposing substantial tax changes in the last few months of 2017, there has been a lot of discussion around the various plans and taxes in general. It would be almost impossible to craft tax legislation without some groups of people coming out better than other groups, and the current crop of legislation is no exception.

Unfortunately, these tax changes – and taxes in general – are very difficult to fully understand, and lots of people have been discussing these changes using information that is incomplete and/or incorrect. For example, it is easy to look at the reduction in tax rates but miss the fact that the personal exemption is gone. I’ve also seen lots of people using tax brackets incorrectly in popular Twitter posts.

I have my own personal views on these proposed pieces of legislation, but what I think about them isn’t very interesting. My goal, rather, is to help better inform the debate around them, because I think it is important to have these discussions with information that is as full and accurate as possible.

I’ve been working on a bunch of content that I’ll be releasing over the coming week, including blog posts explaining various parts of the tax system, some interactive calculators, and more. Tonight, I’m releasing an early version of my first interactive calculator that you can use to see how the proposed changes to the tax code would affect you. You can view it here.

This calculator is far from complete (I’m just one guy and there is limited time to build something like this, since the legislation is being considered now), but it does a decent job of including major changes that would impact most people. It is pretty simple and bare-bones, but I am working on a number of features that will hopefully not just educate you as to how much your taxes will change, but why.

Please check it out and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear about stuff I’m missing and, especially, how I could make it more useful for you.